The Soprano

by England, Sarah

  Prospective, Providence and Coronation Mills – the velvet factories on Tower Hill –employed, among many others, both Ellen and Agnes Bailey, two young sisters living with their widowed mother, Annie, at Wish Lane cottage in Ludsmoor. The work was arduous and the hours long. Annie, testament to this, had developed painful rheumatoid arthritis, which had grotesquely twisted and swollen the knuckles on her hands, and she now lived on the charity of her two daughters, who also had to cook, clean, and do the laundry in the two-up-two-down tiny, stone cottage. There was no bathroom. Like most people they used the cold water tap in the kitchen for a strip wash, and once a week there would be a tin bath in front of the fire, which they took it in turns to use. The toilet was outside in a lean-to with a corrugated iron roof; and there was no heating of any kind apart from the coal fire with great cast iron ovens either side, used for both cooking and drying clothes.

  Widowed at an early age, it was now to her fury and distress that both girls appeared to be succumbing to a similar fate as her own. Working in the fustian mill was a dismal, draining and physically demanding job. The walk up and down the long tables cutting velvet pile demanded total concentration paired with considerable skill, on a noisy, sweltering, dark factory floor. They walked miles and miles a day. And they were paid per length of cloth. If a mistake was made cutting the pile the worker would not receive a penny. Some of the men carried two knives and made twice as much, but for girls already developing swollen knuckles and painful wrists, the future was worrying.

  Amongst the congregation that day, Annie stood with her daughters watching the young man just back from Cambridge. After several years touring Europe on what was known as a ‘Grand Tour’ he had opted for religion as his raison d’étre. Her eyes narrowed to flint. Who the hell was he to tell these people not to drink and not to gamble? And now, ‘Jump to it People! Build me a chapel to lecture and pontificate in’? Was there no end to his pomposity?

  And worse, oh, so much worse, and when she thought about this she could barely breathe. He wanted it built on Pagan ground, as he called it, to stamp out the heathen culture of drunken immorality and reputed witchcraft. This was their chance for salvation, for a new life, and with it to oust all that had gone before. The chapel would therefore be built at the site of Odin’s Tree – a piece of land ‘generously donated by the Danby family’ – a place used by those who had practised the dark arts and who had mired the whole area with their devilish practices and superstition. A place he most vociferously promised would be trounced into the ground back to the bowels of the earth where it belonged.

  “So let us arise and build at once!”

  The congregation broke into near hysteria.

  He held up his hands for calm.

  Laughing. The loathsome bastard was laughing…

  “Concrete plans are at last being put into action”, he told them. “This is no pipe dream.” The Church of England was in full agreement and the Methodist Chapel could be constructed at Odin’s Tree and work could start straight away. Christianity in the form of primitive Methodism would be brought to the working people of Ludsmoor and it was here now! Like most of the other towns and villages in this area they would finally have their very own chapel. In fact, with all hands on board, they could have it before Whitsun.

  “Hitherto the Lord has helped us!” he cried.

  People flocked, running towards him, shaking his hand as he leapt triumphantly down from the castle walls. Men slapped him on the back and bombarded him with questions. There would be a meeting in the village hall that very evening, he informed them. Yes, yes – it would then be decided who would do what. Oh yes, he would provide the materials needed… stone from the mines, mortar, timber, machinery. Indeed, it was on its way. Out of his own family pocket – the generosity of his father…

  And tomorrow the tree would come out.

  Annie remained standing where she was, a lone figure on the edge of the crowd, the black cloth of her dress flapping in the breeze, his words as resonate in her head as a funeral toll. Tomorrow the tree will come out.

  “We must make haste at once!” He was shouting over the tops of heads, mounting his horse, kicking the fine, thoroughbred stallion to a trot.

  She watched him leave, trailed by the masses as if he was the Messiah himself. “Then you will repent at leisure, Sir,” she muttered. “You will repent at leisure.”

  ***

  Chapter Eight

  1951, Grytton Forest

  Marion and Rosa Danby

  “Marion, you mustn’t close your eyes.” Rosa tried to support her sister’s dead weight, grasping at the wet rags of her coat as she slumped to the ground. “No, come on. Stand up. We have to get home or we’ll freeze to death.”

  In despair, she looked about them. Wind rustled through the barren treetops – an urgent rushing, which increased the sense of isolation – lifting snowflakes from the blackened boughs and whirling them into the air. An overwhelming, oppressive fatigue threatened to drag her down and she fought against it, pulling up her scarf to protect her face from the cold. This place, this sense of being trapped in a vortex, had an unnatural, otherworldly atmosphere to it. She tamped down a feeling of rising claustrophobia, a fear they would not be able to escape, and forced herself to think rationally.

  “Marion, you have to stand up. We must keep walking. Listen to me!”

  “I’m too tired. We’ve been walking all night… Need a rest.”

  It was true. Many hours had passed since they first entered the woods and they’d been walking in circles ever since. Disorientated from hypothermia, perhaps? Rosa struggled to concentrate on logical thought. A teacher at Danby Grammar School for Girls, she took Physical Education and knew a thing or two about motivation – keeping tetchy, tired adolescents running cross-country in driving sleet and rain when they hated every minute…Ah, but she kept them on course; and she could do it now. She had to.

  “Marion, I think what’s happened is we’ve become confused and disorientated. Do you hear me?”

  Marion nodded.

  “Okay, good, now listen. We’re suffering from hypothermia and if we stay here much longer we’re going to die from the cold. We have to keep moving. Do you understand?”

  Marion’s voice was slurred as if she’d been drugged. “No, it’s more than that–”

  “What? What do you say?” Crouching next to her, she took hold of Marion’s hands and shook her. “Look at me. Look at me, Marion. Stay awake.” A layer of ice was sinking into her back as surely as if she was drowning in a freezing pond. By now her jaw could barely move enough to speak, and the dark was so absolute not a single thing could be identified within it. Terror lurched inside her and with renewed effort she hurled her best teacher’s voice into the void, the words sounding syrupy and muffled as if the blackness was a living, swirling thing that swallowed them whole. “Hold onto me and stand up. You must stand up. You can and will do it. Think about Lana. Mother can’t look after her – she needs you. Stand up, Marion!”

  The whites of her sister’s eyes were no longer visible, her voice barely above a whisper, and she strained to hear. “They brought us here…on the hare path.”

  “What? No, I don’t understand.”

  “The forest is built on ley lines. Beautiful, powerful… a thinning of the veil… but it’s been—”

  “No, Marion dear – you have to explain later. Come on now, stand up.”

  “Dark arts… and someone knows we’re here… look! Rosa, you must look.”

  “For God’s sake, stand up, Marion. You must…” Her words tailed off as unable to help herself, she glanced over her shoulder to whatever had her sister so transfixed. And her heart slammed into her ribs.

  A white mist had appeared, revealing a stagnant pond and the long, spindly fingers of a weeping willow trailing in its shallows. Rosa blinked and blinked again, unable to comprehend the unfolding scene. Around the water’s edges and now clearly visible were screaming faces of horror – great hollows
resembling ugly gargoyles with wide open mouths, which it took a moment to realise were carved into the bark of every tree. And hanging from the branches, silhouetted against the hazy light, were bundles of sticks fashioned into human figures.

  Comprehension sank in with a dead thud as the two women began to fully register what they were seeing. And the more they looked the more they saw: limp-limbed poppets made of twigs, rags and string, were swinging by the neck from branches arching over the swamp. Dozens of them. Larger dolls had been nailed to the trunks, many just charred and twisted remains, silver pins piercing heads, eyes and hearts, glinting against the blackened bark.

  Rosa stood up and reached towards one.

  “Don’t!” Marion cried. “Don’t touch it. Don’t touch anything.”

  “What the hell is this place?”

  A waxen image of a distorted, partially melted face dangled inches away from her, a rodent’s tail poking out of its chest. A sodden bandage had begun to unravel and Rosa quickly shoved it into her pocket before Marion could stop her. There had been an inscription on it, no doubt smudged now, but it could be something…Her sister’s voice seemed to come from far, far away, and everything viewed from the wrong end of a telescope. She’d only ever been drunk once and the dizzy, sick, lurching feeling of staggering home on a bridge made of rope revisited her now. She grabbed for the nearest branch to stop herself from keeling over. The air of thick oppression was almost palpable: laughter echoing from within the trees; wood smoke choking in her nostrils; the canopy whizzing around like a kaleidoscope.

  Swinging around too quickly, she almost fell. The ground pitched and bucked beneath her and she snatched at twigs, leaves, branches… anything to stop herself from falling.

  “Oh God, no, no…Rosa…we have to–” Marion’s voice was tinny and disembodied. Then all of a sudden she was flying through the air towards her.

  Rosa reeled back. And then there was silence.

  “Where are you?”

  Marion was nowhere.

  “Marion? Sis?”

  Like wading through water, her limbs heavy and her movements slow, it was with a delayed reaction she realised that Marion had fallen and was lying flat on her back.

  “Oh, no! Marion, Marion!”

  Down on the ground, on her hands and knees, the air was slightly clearer, the aroma of damp earth real - enough to fractionally sharpen up her senses. “Are you alright?”

  “I hurt my leg.”

  “You tripped on something.”

  And it was then they both noticed what it was. “Oh, dear God. This is some kind of graveyard. Look at this: four boulders…one-two-three-four…in a kind of circle. And there are names etched on them.”

  Marion sat up and helped Rosa brush the snow away. Roughly hewn from local gritstone were four crudely etched gravestones. Rosa flicked on the torch to try and decipher what had been scored into them, but the light was too weak. Using her finger she traced the names.

  Meg. Agnus. Lizzie. Anne.

  “Marion, these are un-consecrated graves. All these years we’ve lived here and yet never in my life…” She looked up in astonishment. “Did you…?”

  Marion was shuffling away as fast as she could, wincing with a painful ankle. “God help us! Rosa, I know every inch of these woods, I swear, but this is… I don’t know where we are but this is not Grytton Forest.”

  “Of course it is.”

  Staggering to her feet, Marion immediately hunched over as if to retch, her hands clamping both ears, groaning loudly.

  “What is it? Is it the pain? Are you going to be sick?” Rosa rushed over. “Lean on me.”

  But Marion wouldn’t move her hands from her ears. “No, I can’t. There’s screaming in my head – screeching - oh God, the pain!”

  In desperation, Rosa looked around – at the macabre site of effigies and dolls dangling from the trees, at the four graves - and again the sting of fear burned into her stomach. She tugged at Marion’s arm, pulling her away from the scene. “I don’t know which way to go. I can’t see a way out. It’s as if we’re in the centre of a maze—”

  “It’s a trick, Rosa. They’re messing with the order of things again - using this special place—” She clutched at her ears and the agony was clear on her ashen face as silently she screamed, then began to pant rapidly. “It’s been done recently and if we don’t go now this second–”

  “What have they done here? Who?”

  “Blood. The dolls have blood on them. There’s blood on the ground, under the snow – I can smell it. We need to go this second. Help me – pull me away.”

  “Where to?” Away from the mist everything was thickly black, visibility nil. “We’ve tried every path.”

  “Up to Green Man’s Cave.”

  “Are you mad? Up to the moors in this weather? In the opposite direction to home?”

  “I’m going to be sick. Uphill or I swear to God…”

  Marion’s body was crumpling to the floor again.

  There was little choice. Rosa grabbed her elbow and yanked her towards what she hoped was an uphill direction. Her sister had better be right because there was precious little strength left between them now. Neither said another word. Until, with huge relief to them both the path began to steepen. From time to time low moans, like the cries of lost and despairing wanderers came from the misty swamp below; but neither looked back.

  The cave Marion was talking about was on the opposite side of Hilltop Road but they should at least find some shelter there - maybe light a small fire and smoke cigarettes while they figured out what to do next.

  After a few minutes of climbing, Marion said, “We’re coming out of it.”

  Rosa didn’t answer. She knew what her sister meant and that she wasn’t referring to the forest; but the many questions she had would keep for now. The trek was tough going enough. Although both women were skinny and robust, the incline was precipitous and slippery and Marion had undoubtedly strained her ankle. Tired and weakened, they frequently fell, tripping over hidden roots; grabbing at the spiky undergrowth with fingers bleeding from scratches to prevent themselves from sliding down again.

  After steadily ascending for a good twenty minutes more, a fresh current of air began to swirl around their faces and they gasped at it. Almost there. With one final push up the bank, they scrabbled over a dry stone wall and finally through the barrier of trees onto Hilltop Road. Immediately an Arctic blast almost knocked them both sideways, but they held onto each other tightly, panting, knee-deep in snow; surveying the scene.

  “Oh Lord, Rosa, look at it!”

  The road had merged with the horizon in a total white-out. At least a foot of snow now lay silently glittering under a midnight sky studded with stars; and the wind, although less ferocious, was lifting freshly fallen flakes from the surface and scattering them in swirls of fairy dust.

  “We could take the main road and try heading home that way?” Rosa suggested.

  Marion shook her head. “Two hours wading through that when we’re exhausted - maybe more? What time is it now? My watch has stopped.”

  “How funny, so has mine. I’d guess midnight. How long to the cave, would you say?”

  “Ten minutes tops, even in this. I can see it. See that rise of stone?”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  The cave’s opening was a narrow, vertical oblong. Small and slight as they were, the two women still had to squeeze through it before stooping almost double for a sharp descent into the cavern below. With numb fingers inside sopping gloves they tried to grip onto the slippery rock-face, concentrating on not falling down the steep steps. There were fifteen – they had counted them often enough as children – and now they counted again, each narrow ledge part of a spiral staircase that could scoot them down to a freezing grave in an instant.

  “Take it steady,” Rosa instructed from behind. “One step at a time. Let me shine the torch ahead.”

  Green Man’s Cave was unusual in that once through, it immedi
ately descended into a long, natural fissure between adjacent rock walls. Coated with lichen and moss, the cave dripped steadily with moisture all year round. Now though, in the midst of a snowstorm, it provided a haven from the onslaught of cutting Arctic winds; and there were several small alcoves in which to shelter and light a fire.

  Once onto the cave floor, Rosa quickly scouted around for twigs and branches, then put her lighter to the snap-dry kindling and lit them both a cigarette. They sat and smoked for a while, coaxing life into their hands and feet. Overhead the howling winds were muffled; the only sounds those of a low whistling through the tunnels, and the drip-drip-drip of water resonating hypnotically as it plopped onto the rock floor.

  “If you can feel pain in your fingers you haven’t got frostbite,” said Marion, taking off her gloves and hat – trying to dry them out over the sparky flames.

  Rosa nodded. “How do you feel now? Are you alright?”

  “Freezing. Starving.”

  “I mean—”

  “Yes, okay. Thank you.” After a few more minutes, Marion added, “How long shall we hole up? Til daylight?”

  “Yes.” Rosa glanced again at her watch. “How funny, it’s started working again.”

  “So ’s mine. Yes, how odd.”

  “Wrong time, though, it says nine o’clock.”

  “Same here. I think we’ve lost hours, Rosa. It’s gone midnight, definitely.”

  “God, what the hell happened in there? I just don’t understand it. I feel like I’m going mad or something.”

  Marion didn’t answer.